This LA Times piece carries a paradoxical message: the reintroduction of the wolf into areas of Idaho, Wyoming, and Oregon has a been a raging success biologically, but this has come in the face of unremitting hostility from locals (see above bumper sticker). The wolf has been one of the success stories of the Endangered Species Act - but as this article points out, Federal officials are afraid to de-list the wolf for fear of what state and local governments would then do to exterminate them.
The predation numbers carried in this article make it sound as though the Federal and state officials are talking past each other with emotion taking on science. That is becoming an old story here in the western states that have large areas of Federally-owned land. Local officials have an instinctive resentment of any Federal assertions of power in land management. But that's probably the subject of another post.
UPDATE
Please take a look at this. The LA Times has printed a correction. The press release from the governor of Wyoming saying that the ESA was not in force in his state quoted in the story has been revealed as an April Fool's joke swallowed by the reporter.
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